Radio Talking Book

Radio Talking Book

By Radio Talking BookEducation
Download on the App Store

Radio Talking Book episodes

  • Over 50? 5 Smart Tips for Landing a New Job #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    Music

    Over 50? 5 Smart Tips for Landing a New Job

    By Chad Brooks, Business News Daily Senior Writer June 18, 2015
    For many people, finding a new job after the age of 50 becomes more difficult. 
    After losing a job, older job seekers, compared to younger counterparts, receive fewer job offers, search for weeks longer and are ultimately less likely to find re-employment, according to a new study recently published in the Psychological Bulletin.
    Based on data from the U.S. government's 2014 Displaced Worker Survey, researchers discovered that job seekers over age 50 are likely to be unemployed 5.8 weeks longer than someone between the ages of 30 and 49, and 10.6 weeks longer than workers in their 20s. Additionally, the odds of being re-employed decrease by 2.6 percent for each one year increase in age.
    "There's very robust evidence that as an individual moves beyond age 50, they experience a large penalty toward how quickly they will find a job," Connie Wanberg, one of the study's authors and a professor at the University of Minnesota, said in a statement.
    There a variety of factors that contributing to these results. [Surprise! Older Workers Have Fewer Senior Moments ]
    "The obstacles to re-employment success stem not just from employer views about older workers, but also from age-related differences in knowledge, skills and abilities and the kind of jobs people want," said Ruth Kanfer, one of the study's co-authors and a professor at Georgia Tech University. "As individuals age, their skills and abilities change and they may often seek a different type of job."
    Kanfer points to construction workers who carry heavy objects as an example.
    "If they change occupations or move into a different field, that is likely going to slow their search," she said.
    Smaller social networks, marketplace needs, search strategies and what workers want out of a new job are among the other factors that are contributing to older workers' lack of success in finding new jobs.
    To help older job seekers increase their chances of finding work, Wanberg and Kanfer offer several tips:
    Stay current: It's critical that workers never stop trying to learn new skills. Even workers who are currently employed should look for ways to grow their skills and stay current with their industry.
    Boost job search strategies: Older workers are often unfamiliar with the ways job searches are conducted today. It is important they comb a variety of job search websites and understand the applicant requirements and hiring trends for the type of job they're looking for.
    Know what you're up against: Older workers should fully understand that it is possible to find a new job, it's just likely it will take a little longer than expected. Knowing this going into the process will help them stay persistent in their search.
    Define your goals: When looking for a new job, older workers need to think about which aspects of a new job are most important to them and set clear goals and priorities to guide their search.
    Build social networks: When aging, there is a tendency to narrow social networks, which can impact how long it takes to get a new job. It's critical to maintain and expand on social networks when getting older.
    The researchers believe the study shows there is a clear need for a better understanding of how younger and older job seekers differ in their re-employment goals.
    "Job loss is really difficult for older workers, many of whom have probably already been thinking about retiring or slowing down, but had not yet reached a level of financial security to permit retirement," Kanfer said. "Losing your job at this point in life creates a real conundrum - should I put myself through the strain of a job search or just retire for now?"
    The study was co-authored by Darla Hamann, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, and Zhen Zhang, a professor at Arizona State University.

    Chad Brooks

    Chad Brooks is a Chicago-based freelance writer who has nearly 15 years experience in the media business. A graduate of Indiana University, he spent nearly a decade as a staff reporter for the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago, covering a wide array of topics including, local and state government, crime, the legal system and education. Following his years at the newspaper Chad worked in public relations, helping promote small businesses throughout the U.S. Follow him on Twitter.

    6 min
  • Hiring a Coach to Spark the Job Hunt #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    Music

    New York Times

    Hiring a Coach to Spark the Job Hunt
    MARCH 7, 2015
    By ROB WALKER
    My husband lost his high-level, overseas position after the company sold off his division. He has always been an ambitious, successful executive. But in the year since this job ended and we moved back to the United States, he has become depressed. His efforts to find new work, while sincere, have not been consistent.
    I am trying to be supportive and have never nagged him. I would like to find an executive coach for him to work with on his job search — someone who would help him strategize and hold him accountable. A friend recommended someone, but that person seemed like a waste of time and money: She suggested I start a children’s party service to tide us over, even though I have zero experience in that area.
    I think my husband would be open to working with a good coach who has experience working with C-level professionals, but he lacks the motivation and energy to find one himself. What is your advice? ANONYMOUS
    I wondered if it was bad sign that this coach-seeking inquiry wasn’t coming directly from the former executive in question. But Sheryl Spanier, an experienced executive coach based in Manhattan, tells me that it isn’t unusual for a family member to seek advice in this area.
    Whether you are asking for yourself or on behalf of someone else, be aware that lots of people are calling themselves coaches these days, Ms. Spanier says, adding that it’s an unregulated industry. Some have experience dealing with high-level executives, and backgrounds that include therapeutic training. Others may be brand new to the profession, or specialize in practical tactics like sprucing up a résumé.
    But getting recommendations from friends and acquaintances is a reasonable starting point. Gather several options and research the background and training of each. Ms. Spanier uses careercertification.org, the site of the Institute of Career Certification International (she is a former board member) to recommend coaches in other cities.
    Settle on a coach who understands what you need. In a case like yours, Ms. Spanier says, she would probably start not with your husband, but with you, to get a clearer sense of your concerns. Then tell your spouse about your research and offer him a few sessions as a gift. But get him to make the appointment. “He needs to take the first action,” Ms. Spanier says.
    In this case, the process probably shouldn’t start with job search techniques. If someone is in the wrong mind-set, Ms. Spanier says, “you do more damage, because they can’t do what you’re recommending.” A good coach should also be open to concluding that there may be a more serious depression at work that requires a doctor’s attention.
    Barring that situation, all parties should probably focus first on helping your husband understand that his situation is not a personal reflection of his abilities — and then move on to practical strategies that will help him find work again.
    When the Boss Is a Bully
    I work for a successful, growing company, owned by a husband and wife. The problem is that the wife yells at the employees every day. It goes beyond just being upset when things go wrong. She bullies and harasses people. This includes remarks related to race, gender, sexual orientation and whatever else she can think of. If a remark plays on an offensive stereotype, she claims it is a joke. This is demoralizing and makes it hard for us to do our jobs.
    It seems the owners think that because they own the company, they cannot be held responsible for anything they say or do. I would like to educate them and get them to change their behavior. Our human resources department can’t do anything. What can be done, realistically and practically? What government agencies would take an interest in this matter? It would help a lot of great people if I could do something about the situation. NEW YORK
    Your intentions are admirable. But you may want to think about interim steps before seeking government intervention.
    For starters, there’s a gap between a loudmouth bully and a boss with a penchant for blatantly discriminatory and offensive behavior. Discreetly canvass your colleagues and zero in on concrete examples of unacceptable remarks and their consequences. Next: Has anybody brought the issue squarely to the bosses’ attention? Believe it or not, they may not realize that the wife’s behavior is offending workers.
    I’m puzzled that the H.R. department “can’t do anything.” If it’s clear that the situation is a potential threat to the business, H.R. ought to take that message to management, and know how to do so.
    That said, an employee who believes that he or she is being subjected to a hostile work environment may file a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the first step in a process that could lead to legal action. Perhaps this will turn out to be the only option, but it’s one that, at best, would be less about “educating” the bosses and more about “teaching them a lesson.” Details vary by state and company size, but a visit to eeoc.gov may help clarify the wisdom of pursuing that strategy.

    7 min
  • Health Care Opens Stable Career Path, Taken Mainly by Women #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    Music
    From the New York Times
    Health Care Opens Stable Career Path, Taken Mainly by Women
    By DIONNE SEARCEY, EDUARDO PORTER and ROBERT GEBELOFF, FEB. 22, 2015
    HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — For Tabitha Waugh, it was another typical day of chaos on the sixth-floor cancer ward.
    The fire alarm was blaring for the second time that afternoon, prompting patients to stumble out of their rooms. One confused elderly man approached Ms. Waugh, a registered nurse at St. Mary’s Medical Center here, but she had no time to console him. An aide was shouting from another room, where a patient sat dazed on the edge of his bed, blood pooling on the floor from the IV he had yanked from his vein.
    “Hey, big guy, can you lay back in bed?” she asked, as she cleaned the patient before inserting a new line. He winced. “Hold my hand, O.K.?” she said.
    Ms. Waugh, who is 30 and the main breadwinner in her family of four, still had three hours to go before the end of a 12-hour shift. But despite the stresses and constant demands, all the hard work was paying off.
    Her wage of nearly $27 an hour provides for a comfortable life that includes a three-bedroom home, a pickup truck and a new sport utility vehicle, tumbling classes for her 3-year-old, Piper, and dozens of brightly colored Thomas the Tank Engine cars heaped under the double bed of her 6-year-old, Collin.
    A Shifting Middle
    The daughter of a teacher’s aide and a gas station manager, Ms. Waugh, like many other hard-working and often overlooked Americans, has secured a spot in a profoundly transformed middle class. While the group continues to include large numbers of people sitting at desks, far fewer middle-income workers of the 21st century are donning overalls. Instead, reflecting the biggest change in recent years, millions more are in scrubs.
    “We used to think about the men going out with their lunch bucket to their factory, and those were good jobs,” said Jane Waldfogel, a professor at Columbia University who studies work and family issues. “What’s the corresponding job today? It’s in the health care sector.”
    In 1980, 1.4 million jobs in health care paid a middle-class wage: $40,000 to $80,000 a year in today’s money. Now, the figure is 4.5 million.
    The pay of registered nurses — now the third-largest middle-income occupation and one that continues to be overwhelmingly female — has risen strongly along with the increasing demands of the job. The median salary of $61,000 a year in 2012 was 55 percent greater, adjusted for inflation, than it was three decades earlier.
    And it was about $9,000 more than the shriveled wages of, say, a phone company repairman, who would have been more likely to head a middle-class family in the 1980s. Back then, more than a quarter of middle-income jobs were in manufacturing, a sector long dominated by men. Today, it is just 13 percent.
    As the job market has shifted, women, in general, have more skillfully negotiated the twists and turns of the new economy, rushing to secure jobs in health care and other industries that demand more education and training. Men, by contrast, have been less successful at keeping up.
    In many working- and middle-class households, women now earn the bigger paycheck, work longer hours and have greater opportunities for career advancement. As a result, millions of American families are being reconfigured along with the economy.
    “The culture still has traditional attitudes about who does what, who brings home the bacon and who scrambles the eggs,” said Isabel Sawhill, co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution. “The economy is now out of sync with the culture, and I think that’s creating tensions within marriage.”
    A New Springboard
    At the Waughs’ house, it is T.J. Waugh, 33, who picks up the couple’s two children from the babysitter when he leaves his afternoon shift at a small plant in Huntington.

    The Changing Nature of Middle-Class Jobs

    The types of jobs that pay middle-class wages have shifted since 1980. Fewer of these positions are in male-dominated production occupations, while a greater share are in workplaces more open to women.

    By the time Ms. Waugh arrives home in rural Salt Rock from her shift, often far later than her 7 p.m. quitting time, the children have been bathed and fed.

    The house is usually messy. The bathroom walls are covered with scribbles from bath crayons; dirty clothes pile up. Ms. Waugh often jams six 12-hour shifts into one week, leaving little time for cleaning and laundry. Mr. Waugh mows the lawn and will run the vacuum cleaner now and then, and if there are no clean towels, Ms. Waugh will do a load of laundry. Otherwise, housework waits until she has a stretch of days off.
    “I’m just really tired when I get home,” Ms. Waugh said.
    Ms. Waugh is the keeper of the family’s books. That she out-earns her husband — a pipe fitter who hunts deer and plays men’s softball on the weekends — is an unspoken given.
    “She doesn’t rub that in,” he said.
    Without missing a beat, Ms. Waugh adds, “It doesn’t matter where it comes from.”
    Most of the new jobs produced by America’s sprawling economy — especially since the turn of the century — are either in highly paid occupations that often require an advanced degree, or, more predominantly, in lower-paid positions providing direct services that cannot be sent overseas and, at least for now, are difficult to automate.
    But even with a hollowing out of the job market and a broad stagnation in wages, an analysis by The New York Times has found, a set of occupations has emerged that holds promise as the base of a more robust middle class.
    Many are in health care, which has grown sharply over the last few decades.
    Economists at the Labor Department project that by 2022, as baby boomers age, health care and social assistance will absorb nearly 20 percent of consumer spending, double the share of manufactured goods. The sector is expected to support over 21 million jobs, five million more than today. This includes half a million more registered nurses.
    A Rare Green Shoot
    The reordering of the economic landscape can be seen all over West Virginia’s old coal country, where billboards along the highways that run through the region advertise a new cardiac center and an orthopedic clinic; and where a strip mall houses Scrubs Unlimited, a medical outfitter, its retail floor crammed with nursing uniforms in 38 colors and Peter Pan prints.
    Hugging the Ohio River as it bends around the Appalachian foothills, Cabell County, which includes Huntington, has often found itself on the wrong side of economic change. The population — about 97,000 today — has shrunk 10 percent over the last three decades, as the old have died and many of the young have left.
    The railroad that helps shuttle coal to Huntington, one of the nation’s busiest inland ports, is still a source of jobs. But manufacturing employment — once clustered at the long-gone glassmaking plants and furniture makers — has dwindled to fewer than 5,000 jobs. Recently, a 1920s-era nickel alloy plant laid off dozens of workers after a bankruptcy, a corporate acquisition and weak sales.
    In real terms, wages in Cabell County now are lower than in the 1970s, stumbling along well below the national average. One in five residents lives in poverty.
    The health care industry — which added 3,000 jobs here over the last 10 years — is one of the few green shoots in a struggling economy.
    West Virginia has been battered by the same forces that have reshaped the nation since the late 1970s, when global competition, an overvalued dollar, declining unions and advanced technology began to undercut the jobs created during America’s industrial heyday, deepening income inequality. And since 2000, the share of middle-income workers has been squeezed and wages have stagnated.
    Yet many of the jobs added in medical services here and across the nation have turned out to be surprisingly good ones.
    That was what motivated the only male registered nurse colleague of Ms. Waugh’s on the sixth-floor cancer unit, Johnny Dial, a former highway construction worker and heavy equipment mechanic. More men are joining nursing, but they still make up only 10 percent of the ranks, compared with 4 percent in 1980.
    As Mr. Dial contemplated supporting a family, it came down to health care or the railroad if he wanted job security and benefits. He chose what he thought would be a more fulfilling career, and the same one as his wife, who is also a nurse.
    “You get to help people,” Mr. Dial said.
    Women Stepped Up
    Similar thinking was behind the career choices of Ms. Waugh’s fellow female R.N.s. They include a former waitress, a former journalist, an ex-administrator in a metals factory and a former store clerk at Bath & Body Works. In addition to the satisfaction of the work, they all said, the wages are generally better in health care than they could find in other fields.
    Ms. Waugh has urged her husband to try to move up at his company, where he earns about $40,000 in regular wages, plus pay for occasional extra shifts, or to switch to a more lucrative career, maybe even in health care as a radiology technician.
    But for Mr. Waugh, the only way up at the plant is to go into sales, a promotion he already turned down because he said he did not want to “deal with people.” He could earn more in the coal mines, but that work is dirty and dangerous.
    Mr. Waugh has talked about trying college again; he dropped out twice in the past. At one point, his wife even filled out application papers for him to jump-start his re-enrollment, but he did not pursue class work.
    “My philosophy is he is lazy,” Ms. Waugh said, standing in the hospital’s white hallway. “That’s what makes me so mad.”
    For all the troubles associated with traditionally male jobs, women have not had an easy ride through the economic turmoil, either.
    “The occupational structure has not somehow become more women-friendly,” said David Autor, an economist at M.I.T. who has studied the changing American job market. In fact, he added, “the hollowing out of middle-skill jobs was larger for women than for men.” The process intensified sharply during the financial crisis and the ensuing economic downturn.
    But in general women have reacted much better, climbing the educational ladder to capture more of the better jobs. Today, 38 percent of women in their late 20s and early 30s have a college degree, compared with 15 percent 40 years ago. The completion rate for young men is now 7 percentage points lower than for women — back then it was 7 points higher.
    This has given women an edge in the new job market: Today, almost 58 percent of registered nurses have a bachelor’s degree or more, compared with about a third in 1980.
    This is true across the range of occupations capable of supporting a middle-class life. In 1980, 55 percent of workers who earned the equivalent of $40,000 to $80,000 in today’s dollars had at most a high school diploma, according to the analysis by The Times, which reviewed census returns for employed people ages 25 to 64. Only a quarter had a college degree. Today, the share of college graduates has risen to about 41 percent, while just under 31 percent have completed no more than high school.
    “The days when a very, very substantial share of the work force would be able to make good middle-class incomes from jobs that did not require post-high school training are just not the case anymore,” said Francine D. Blau, an economics professor at Cornell University.
    Men still hold most of the top jobs in the economy, including seven out of 10 jobs that pay over $80,000 a year. But women are rapidly moving up the ranks. Women hold 44 percent of middle-income jobs, compared with about a quarter 30 years ago.
    These trends may not hold forever. Though educational attainment continues to rise for women, their progress in the workplace — in terms of both wages and jobs — has slowed significantly. Tighter controls on the cost of health care could weaken the job growth and pay raises helping support the new American middle. And while the industry is largely immune to foreign competition, it may be affected by advances in labor-saving technology.
    Even as more women get ahead, many men are struggling to grab a handhold into higher-paying jobs. After her husband was laid off from a string of auto mechanic jobs, Donna Colbey, 53, urged him to switch careers and become a radiology technician.
    It was a job Ms. Colbey knew would offer a good salary and require only two years of training. She had taken the same route, which eventually led her to a nursing career at a Washington hospital.
    He enrolled in the courses but dropped out after a few months.
    “He got tripped up over the math and didn’t go back,” said Ms. Colbey, who regularly picks up extra shifts to support her family.
    A Relentless Pursuit
    Far more is expected of nurses now than even two decades ago. Medical advances have kept patients alive longer, meaning many are sicker with more complex illnesses than in the past. Nurses must master technology that helps both treat and track patients, and they are called on to coordinate not just with doctors but also social workers and physical therapists.

    The Shrinking American Middle Class

    The share of the American population that is middle income has been shrinking for several decades. Until fairly recently, that was because more people were entering a higher-income bracket. Now it’s for the opposite reason.

    At St. Mary’s Medical Center, Ms. Waugh, in her navy scrubs, fed potassium on a recent day into the vein of one woman with a broken hip who was on the cancer floor because of a lack of beds. She gave anti-nausea medicine to a moaning young man with liver cancer in the midst of chemotherapy and prepared pills for a half-dozen other patients, documenting it all on a computer.

    An outpatient arrived for his regular blood-drawing and, squatting alongside him in a waiting room, Ms. Waugh unbuttoned his shirt and collected blood from an access port in his chest.
    Ms. Waugh’s pursuit of learning to advance her career has been relentless. By her own count, she has been out of school for no longer than two years since kindergarten.
    All that education has come with a cost. The couple has amassed about $50,000 in student debt. Ms. Waugh would like to send her children to a better school, but the $10,000 annual tuition that would require is out of reach. “I can’t save for their college and send them to private school,” she said.
    To her husband’s co-workers who are raising families on pipe fitters’ ...

    19 min
  • Working Strategies: Four options for easing job search pain #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Working Strategies: Four options for easing job search pain

    By Amy Lindgren

    Posted:   04/26/2015 12:01:00 AM CDT
    The good news is that the job market has been improving. The bad news?
    That kicked-in-the-stomach feeling you may be experiencing if you're not one of the people benefiting from the upturn.
    It's one thing to be unemployed when unemployment seems like the norm; it's entirely different when you feel like the last kid picked for the softball team.
    It's normal for me to see people who are hurting from a frustrated search, or from the job loss that led up to it.
    Pain is to be expected and it can even be helpful.
    But too much pain is a problem. It can morph into a psychic burden that threatens to stay with a person even into the next job.
    One way to know if you've slipped into this zone is by checking your inner monologue.
    Do you generally feel hopeless or hopeful about finding work? Have you slowed or stopped looking for work?
    Are you still looking, but with only half your attention? Do you feel defeated?
    None of these strike me as abnormal reactions to the situation, but they can get in the way of a productive search.
    If your emotional state is holding you back, it's time to do something about it.
    Following are four options to consider.
    SELF TALK
    Yep, we're talking Stuart Smalley here, the timeless goofball from Saturday Night Live who used to look in the mirror and declare, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!" (If you need a refresher on Sen. Al Franken's 1990s alter-ego, you'll find hilarious snippets on YouTube.
    To put a practical spin on positive self talk, examine your history to find challenges you have overcome.
    Whether you're recalling an illness you weathered as a child or a project at work you salvaged, the point is to remind yourself that you have successes in your background.
    Now look again in your personal toolbox to see what attributes and strengths you have stored in there. Humor? Problem-solving? Extroversion? Analysis?
    Whatever the list, now is the time to not only remind yourself of these positive points but to leverage them in solving the problem at hand.
    CONFIDENCE BUILDERS
    Positive self talk is good, but it can take you only so far.
    You need to rebuild your confidence if you're going to present a can-do image to others.
    I recommend that downtrodden job seekers rebalance their schedules to include a mix of training, part-time work and volunteering. These activities will help you build achievements, while also enhancing your networking and marketability.
    Exercise is another great confidence builder.
    Even a daily walk can be enough to make you feel better about yourself while giving you the known benefits that come from movement.
    STRATEGY
    Regular readers of this column know that I recommend a targeted job search method, where you choose a job goal, then build a list of companies that use people in those roles, then contact managers of the relevant departments to request a meeting. This can be scary at first, but it's far better for self-esteem (and effectiveness) than throwing yourself into the soulless chasm of the online job boards.
    Whatever your strategy, be sure you've broken it into steps and assigned a deadline to each step. This keeps the job search bite-sized instead of gigantic, which is important when you're struggling.
    SUPPORT
    Simply put, I advise that you get help wherever possible, even if you feel perfectly capable of doing a task yourself. For example, if you need to build a list of companies, why not engage a friend to help you sort information online or at a library? It might not go any faster, but it will definitely be more fun.
    At some point you should be asking yourself: Do I need professional help for this emotional pain? If you're already seeing a therapist, tell him or her that you're struggling with the job search. If you're not seeing someone, consider adding a therapist to your support team.
    Job seekers have told me their therapists helped them learn to take risks, approach tasks that seem overwhelming, and deal with rejection -- all essential parts of job search. And of course I've talked with job seekers who have worked with a medical professional to start on medications for anxiety or depression.
    The emotional fallout of unemployment is just another problem to solve, albeit a difficult one. You can do this. Whether you rely on positive self talk or make an appointment with a professional, change something so you can move forward. It's your turn to win at the job search game.
    Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at [email protected].

    7 min
  • Ask Matt: Does it matter what time I interview? #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    Music
    From the Star Tribune
    Ask Matt: Does it matter what time I interview?
    By MATT KRUMRIE
    May 26, 2015
    Dear Matt: Does it really matter what day and time I interview?
    Matt says: Ninety-nine percent of interviewees would rather be anywhere else on the planet than at an interview, says career development coach Vicky Oliver (vickyoliver.com), author of “301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions”. There’s a tendency to want to get the interview over with as soon as possible — so if you have a choice, choose a morning time slot for your interview.
    “Studies show that people who interview in the morning are offered the job more often than those who take afternoon interviews,” says Oliver.
    Also, midweek days are better interview days than either Mondays or Fridays. On Monday everyone has too many meetings to give your interview the attention it deserves. On Friday most interviewers are ready to leave the work week behind. Interview on a Friday and there’s a chance your interviewer will be on to more pressing issues by Monday and any momentum is lost, says Oliver.
    But no matter when your interview is scheduled, preparation is key. Many job seekers assume that since they have an interview they have the inside track. But for each job there could be as many as five to 10 people interviewing, and even if your HR contact or recruiter seem excited to meet you, shouldn’t they be excited about all the candidates? In other words, your work is far from over. If you know someone who works at the company — or even know someone who knows someone — get in contact with them and ask questions to learn everything you can about the company management, new initiatives, general morale, even the personality of your interviewer.
    “Having a deep knowledge of both the industry and the actual company where you are interviewing will help separate you from those with only a superficial understanding,” says Oliver. “You’ll ask smarter questions and be more memorable as a result.”
    When it’s time to ask questions, providing industry observations or kudos for recent company successes are good lead-ins. Then ask questions that determine if the company will be a good fit for you: “What type of employees tend to succeed here?” Never ask questions about perks until an offer is made and steer clear of questions that suggest you’re not the right person for the job, such as “Will I really have to travel two days a week?”
    Most interviewees believe the in-person meeting with the hiring manager is the last step. Unfortunately, it’s only the first step. After a great meeting, begin your campaign for the job. Send a handwritten thank-you the same day and plan out a communication strategy for reaching out to the interviewer again.
    “You are on a campaign for a job until you land the job,” says Oliver — no matter what day and time you interview.
    Contact Matt at [email protected].

    5 min
  • Mind Your Email Manners In business communication, it is important to observe some etiquette rules #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    Music
    From The Wall Street Journal

    Mind Your Email Manners

    In business communication, it is important to observe some etiquette rules

    Business etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore, at her Lake Worth, Fla., home, says that drafting business emails is a craft that should prioritize a professional tone. By

    Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
    April 15, 2015 1:03 p.m. ET
    So much business communication takes place electronically that people tend to dash off emails without thinking about them. But even with quick messages, it is important to observe some etiquette rules.
    “Email is often the first impression that others get of you,” says etiquette expert Jacqueline Whitmore, who has done executive coaching and leadership training programs for various Fortune 500 companies.
    Ms. Whitmore believes one thing above all: “Err on the side of being more formal.” When composing an email, she never starts without a salutation. “An email deserves a greeting,” says Ms. Whitmore. “We’ve gotten so lax in the way that we communicate that we’re apt to forget good habits.”
    If the recipient is someone Ms. Whitmore has never met before, she’ll likely begin with “Dear.” Generally, though, she will use “Hello.” After that first email exchange, though, Ms. Whitmore takes her cues from the person she is emailing. “If the person says ‘Hi’ to me, I will say ‘Hi’ back,” she says. “I will mirror the person I am emailing.”
    Timing is important. “The rule is you should reply to an email within 24 hours,” Ms. Whitmore says. “Even if you don’t have an answer for someone, reply anyway and say ‘Thank you for your email—I’ll get back to you by such and such a date.’ ”
    Ms. Whitmore, who has written two books, “Poised for Success” and “Business Class: Etiquette Essentials for Success at Work,” likes to start the body of her email with a short, thoughtful sentence. “If you haven’t spoken to the person in a while, it’s best to put some little nicety in the front, like ‘Happy New Year’ or ‘I hope you had a great holiday,’” she says.
    After that, Ms. Whitmore tries to be as direct and succinct as possible. “I always keep my sentences very short,” says Ms. Whitmore, who is also the founder of The Protocol School of Palm Beach in Florida. “People have hundreds of email to answer in a day. The chances that somebody will respond increase when the email is shorter.”
    Ms. Whitmore likes to keep her paragraphs short as well. With especially busy people, bullet points are a good idea. “I work with a lot of executives who are very busy, and they just want the facts,” she says. “I almost set it up like a memo so it’s easier to read.”
    While it can be easy to fall into a casual tone, especially if you’re tapping out your email on a portable device, Ms. Whitmore cautions against it. “Remember that emails can be forwarded, they can be duplicated,” she says. “Keep emotions out of it, and keep it simple.”
    At the same time, Ms. Whitmore is careful not to be come across as curt. “No one can see your facial expressions or hear your tone of voice, so the only way they’re gauging your emotions is the tone that you use in that email,” she says. So, while she tries to keep things short, she also will add words such as “I’m happy to do it” to convey a little warmth.
    Some people try to convey emotions in emails with happy or sad faces such as :) or with extra exclamation points. Ms. Whitmore says she does use such measures when she thinks it is appropriate—“but never when I’m trying to make a good first impression,” she says. “If I’ve known the person a long time and we’ve developed a friendship, I find it more appropriate to be less formal. But when in doubt, leave it out.”

    A model business email, annotated with tips for crafting emails that hit the right business etiquette notes and maintain a professional tone.

    “Text speak” is a strict don’t, Ms. Whitmore says. Acronyms such as “lol” “don’t have a place in a business email,” she says. “Even if you’ve just graduated from college and you’re now out in the workforce, remember that a lot of your clients may be baby boomers. It’s important for you to stay professional.”

    More people are writing messages in all lowercase letters. Ms. Whitmore likes to reserve that for personal emails.
    Make sure nothing is misspelled. “It can reflect poorly on your company if you send a poorly composed email,” Ms. Whitmore says. “People may think, ‘This person handles the balance sheets for my company and he can’t even spell there?’ So read and reread it before sending it.”
    Also, be sure to put in a clear subject line at the top—something busy professionals prize. “If you don’t have anything in the subject line at all, you can’t figure out if it’s something you want to open right away,” Ms. Whitmore says.
    Signing off carries potential pitfalls as well. “If I don’t know the person well, the safest way to sign off is ‘Best regards,’” Ms. Whitmore says. “Kind regards” and “Warmest regards” convey formality with just a little more affection, she adds. “Best” is commonly used and works for most situations, but if Ms. Whitmore feels a more formal tone is called for, she’ll use “Sincerely,” which she notes is “a little more distant.”
    A definite no: “xoxo,” which should only be reserved for best friends or “if I really, really love somebody,” Ms. Whitmore says.
    A signature tag line beneath your signoff is a must, says Ms. Whitmore. This could list your name, your company’s name, your phone number and perhaps your website and one social-media handle.
    “Don’t put unnecessary things in your signature like quotes or religious sayings,” Ms. Whitmore says. Similarly, photos in signature lines may not come off well. “Not everybody needs to see your picture,” she says.
    Write to Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan at [email protected]

    7 min
  • Ask Matt: 1,000 interviews, still no job! Why? #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    Music
    From the Star Tribune
    Ask Matt: 1,000 interviews, still no job! Why?
    By MATT KRUMRIE
    April 27, 2015
    Dear Matt: I’ve interviewed over 1,000 times and still don’t have a job. What’s going on?
    Matt says: This reader claims he has sent out 12 applications a week, had 2-3 interviews a week and spent 10 years trying to get a real job. The fact that he’s getting so many interviews and no offers is a real red flag, says Ron McGowan, author of “How to Find Work in the 21st Century — A Guide to Finding Employment in Today’s Workplace” (howtofindwork.ca). He must have marketable skills to be getting the interviews, so the key question is, why no offers?
    “Spending 10 years trying to get a real job tells me that, like many others, they’re fixated on finding a traditional job and ignoring other options,” says McGowan, a former small business owner and recruiter who has read thousands of résumés in his career. This job seeker also hears he’s overqualified, would cost too much money and that employers are afraid he would get bored. So, he ends up in temporary/contract jobs, which he says is about filling a slot until the employer can find someone who is the right fit and/or the most qualified.
    But this is where the job seeker is wrong, says McGowan. Today’s job seekers must be willing to offer themselves on a temporary, contract or part-time basis. If the only option they give employers is to offer them a traditional job, they’re making it hard for the employer to hire them. Even if the employer is interested in them, they may be reluctant to increase their employee base. For small companies, where most of the opportunities are (and where struggling job seekers often fail to look), hiring someone full-time isn’t always an option. This is something many job seekers realize they must accept only after a long period of unemployment — but by then they’ve created other obstacles. “They may be so bitter, or discouraged, that they do poorly in interviews,” says McGowan. “And some employers won’t hire anyone who has been unemployed for a long time.”
    Few job seekers know how to sell themselves effectively, and the very idea of doing this scares the heck out of them, adds McGowan. Many job seekers also lack creativity, rarely getting past the “Dear Sir, please find attached my résumé” approach, which will get them nowhere. They also overlook the effect a negative online presence (comments made on social media, poorly-developed LinkedIn profile) has on their job search; and they focus only on advertised positions, not understanding that most opportunities today are never advertised. Networking is the key to finding hidden jobs, and changing your approach is the key to finding a new position.
    “The fundamental fact that people can’t come to terms with is we’re in a new era in the workplace,” says McGowan, “and the approach employment seekers have used in the past doesn’t work.”
    Contact Matt at [email protected].

    5 min
  • 5 Little-Known Secrets About Job Searching #RadioTalkingBook Channel

    Career Corner is a program produced by the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network, part of State Services for the Blind, and it is recorded for people are blind or have reading disabilities. You can listen to the stream of the Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network at www.mnssb.org/rtb, and the password is RTB. Your host, for Career Corner is Anne Obst.

    Music
    From: Facebook Twitter

    5 Little-Known Secrets About Job Searching

    A behind-the-scenes look at the hiring process.

    Don't be deterred from applying to a job if you have most – but not all – of the qualifications listed.

    By Alison Green March 2, 2015
    You might think you’re an experienced job seeker who understands how hiring processes work. But behind the scenes, hiring often works differently than job seekers assume it does. Here are five hiring secrets you probably don’t know that can give you an advantage over your competition.
    1. Application deadlines often don’t mean anything. Job seekers often take application deadlines as gospel, but they’re frequently interpreting them incorrectly. Many job posting sites require employers to list a deadline when submitting a job opening. That means employers are forced to pick a date even if it doesn't reflect how they’re actually managing the search.
    So candidates might see a deadline listed and figure they have until then to submit an application, when in reality, the employer might be interviewing candidates on a rolling basis and make a hire before that deadline has rolled around. Or perhaps the employer hasn't yet made a hire, but  it might be far along in the process with other candidates and using much stricter criteria to add anyone else to the mix.
    2. You can fudge your answers to some of those automated application requirements. The people who set up online application systems sometimes don’t think about the requirements they program into them, and how they’ll kick out people whose applications they might actually like to see. For example, you might encounter an application system that asks if you have a bachelor’s degree in economics and gives you the option to answer "yes" or "no." Let’s say you don’t have a bachelor’s in economics, but you do have a master's in economics. If you answer the system’s question honestly, you might be automatically rejected, even though your master's should get you through this screening requirement. (And if you were being screened by a human, it almost certainly would.)
    Rather than answering every question literally, thereby getting yourself automatically rejected, it’s often smarter to answer the questions in the spirit in which they seem intended. It’s OK to answer in the way you think best gets your qualifications across. Then just make sure that you include clear, concise explanations of anything necessary in the notes section and make sure that your résumé is accurate.
    3. Employers call references who aren’t on your official reference list. Employers know the names on your reference list were likely selected because they’re the people most likely to say glowing things about you. Because of that, smart employers won’t stick to the list you provide; they’ll ask to be put in touch with additional managers from your past or just contact them on their own. And employers don’t need your permission to call people who aren’t on your reference list, so you might not know they’re doing this. And speaking of references …
    4. Policies about not providing references are frequently broken. Some employers have policies of not giving references beyond confirming your dates of employment and your title. That might lead you to think you don’t need to worry about that manager who hated you giving you a bad reference, or to worry that the boss who loved you won’t be able to tell anyone that.
    In reality, however, these corporate policies are broken all the time. Human resources offices are generally sticklers about adhering to the rules themselves, but individual managers are often willing to give detailed references no matter what their company policy is. That’s especially true when a manager thinks you’re a great worker and wants to help you get your next job.
    5. No one will be outraged if you apply for a job you’re not perfectly qualified for. Conscientious job seekers often worry about whether they have precisely the right qualifications to apply for a particular opening, but they might be worrying about this too much. If you have most, but not all, of the qualifications an employer is looking for, it’s often worth applying anyway. Many times, job qualifications are more like wish lists, and the employer will end up hiring someone who doesn’t perfectly match the job posting.
    If you’re worried you’re wasting the employers' time or that they’ll roll their eyes at your application, know that loads of unqualified people apply for most openings. There are almost certainly people in the candidate pool for the job you’re considering who are less qualified than you are!
    Besides, the worst that can happen is that they’ll reject you. But you might end up with an interview.
    Alison Green writes the popular Ask a Manager blog, where she dispenses advice on career, job search and management issues. She's the author of “How to Get a Job: Secrets of a Hiring Manager,” co-author of “Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Manager's Guide to Getting Results” and the former chief of staff of a successful nonprofit organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management.


    7 min
  • Maps That You Can Hear and Touch #BATeenCast

    BA Teen Cast is produced by Radio Talking Book Network and is part of the State Services for the Blind. and is recorded for people who are blind or have reading disabilities. For complete programing you can find Radio Talking Book on the web at Http://www.mnssb.org/rtb

    To inquire about services from State Services for the Blind contact us at Http://www.mnssb.org

    13 min

About Radio Talking Book

From the publisher's feed

The Minnesota Radio Talking Book Network was the world's first radio reading service for people with blindness and visual impairment. It began January 2, 1969. The signal is also heard via the internet and across the country via satellite..